October 2015 – Looking Forward

October 27, 2015

The Virtual City-State Of All Ohio?

Last week, I attended the conference that launched the new Global Institute for the Study of the Intelligent Community, based in Dublin, Ohio.

In the annual evaluation by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF),
Dublin has been among the most intelligent communities in the world for
the last few years. Nearby Columbus, Ohio was designated the most
intelligent community this past June.

The institute will share
innovations and best practices to help make communities more prosperous,
livable, resilient and intelligent. Although using broadband and
technology is a part of the story, the institute is part of the ICF
movement which has distinguished itself by its emphasis as well on all
the other factors that make a community intelligent. As such, the effort
to become an intelligent community involves all elements of a
community, not just technologists. Much of the discussion encouraged
leaders from Dublin, Columbus and other places in Ohio to think about
what a successful intelligent community means and how to measure it.

Dana
McDaniel, who had been in charge of Dublin’s economic development
strategy and is now its city manager, organized and led the conference.
In the moments when people had a chance to outline their longer term
vision, he had an intriguing thought. He wants to unify and treat Ohio
as the first intelligent community that encompasses a whole state.

This
reminded me of my work on technology-based economic development in
Massachusetts a few years ago. Massachusetts’ problem was that the
Boston/Cambridge area of the state was its primary economic engine, but
that the rest of the state, especially the central region, had suffered
economically.

Several states have a similar situation with only
one truly prosperous region. New York, Illinois, Colorado and Washington
are reasonably good examples of the problem.

So we came up with a
plan that would use broadband connectivity to link the rest of
Massachusetts to the Boston area. We knew this might be fraught with
political objections from other parts of the state not wanting to lose
their identity by being considered virtual suburbs of Boston.

Instead,
we were trying to find a way to link together the whole state. This
would not only provide resources and potential financing from Boston for
those elsewhere, but just as important it could provide people in
Boston with new entrepreneurial ideas that could only flourish in areas
with a different business atmosphere.

While it certainly has
pockets of relative affluence and poverty, Ohio is actually not one of
those states with a single economic engine. Despite that – or maybe
because of that – the idea of weaving together all the communities in a
state is germinating there.

By contrast, some states that do have
the problem of a concentration of prosperity seem to be going in the
opposite direction – splitting themselves into non-cooperating regions,
thus diminishing the state’s overall impact and putting every region in a
weaker competitive position.

I’ve noted before that
communications technology today makes possible a virtual metropolis
created through the linked combination of rural areas.

Ohio’s
variation on the theme is also an interesting development to watch. It
may well position Ohio as the forerunner for economic growth for the
rest of the USA – a 21st century virtual version of the economically
dominant city-states of the European Renaissance.

© 2015 Norman Jacknis, All Rights Reserved
[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/132017256455/the-virtual-city-state-of-all-ohio]

October 20, 2015

8 Trends Create 8 Opportunities For 21st Century Libraries

The fifth annual worldwide virtual conference about the future of libraries in the digital age, Library 2.0, is being held today. I just completed my keynote presentation.

Too often, discussions about libraries focus on how technological and economic trends are assaulting them.

The
warnings have been around for some time. Twenty years ago at the
General Conference of the International Federation of Library
Associations, Chris Batt, then Director of the Croydon UK Library, gave a
speech on the “The library of the future”. He said:

“What are
the implications of all for this for the future of public libraries? …
The answer is that while we cannot be certain about the future for our
services, we can and should be developing a vision which encompasses and
enriches the potential of the Internet. If we do not do that then
others will; and they will do it less well.”

So I followed the advice attributed to President Lincoln,

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

And
I chose instead to focus on the positive and the pro-active in my
keynote to the conference. I aimed to encourage the audience to push the
envelope, going beyond the constraints in their thinking about the role
of the library.

Its title tells the story: “How The Future
Requires Us To Re-envision Libraries: Trends In Technology, Society, The
Economy And Government Provide New Opportunities For Libraries”.

The
theme was that librarians should not just wait and see how to respond
to this century’s trends, but instead seize the opportunities these
trends open up and provide leadership to define the future of libraries
and society in our knowledge-based economy.

Here then are the eight trends I discussed and how each opens up another opportunity for library leadership in this century:

If you’d like to see the presentation, it’s at https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/table/dropin?sid=2008350&suid=D.CC1B958CD5B8C600676595BA71FF55

© 2015 Norman Jacknis, All Rights Reserved
[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/131572189014/8-trends-create-8-opportunities-for-21st-century]

October 14, 2015

The Digital Imperative Of Rural Libraries

The maker movement is one of the hottest trends in the public library world. Maker spaces in libraries have the latest in 3D printing technology, digital media tools and other tools for the creative person who wants to make things. These are full-fledged STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts and math) labs.

As you might expect, there are maker spaces somewhere in most major urban and suburban libraries.

But what is perhaps surprising and intriguing is the growth of maker spaces in small towns and rural areas — and why maker spaces are especially needed in those places and why those areas are fertile ground for maker spaces.

The countryside is known for the mechanical skills of many of its residents. Perhaps these skills were developed in response to distance from major service hubs and the necessity to keep farm and household equipment going.

For at least the last ten years, much traditional mechanical equipment has become computerized. And engines have become more reliable. So mechanical skills just aren’t as useful anymore.

Or maybe they are. That is what I think has caught the attention of rural librarians. Leah Hamilton, the manager of the Phelps Library in a small upstate New York town that had one of the first makerspaces in the USA, puts it this way:

“The library is a place for idea-sharing, … Our region has a wealth of manufacturing industries, and these businesses require well-trained, highly qualified employees. … We can provide the tools for inspiration of invention and the betterment of people’s livelihoods.”

Considering their limited budgets, it’s amazing how many of these libraries in rural areas have built makerspaces.

These are in small towns in Wisconsin, with populations well under 10,000 residents, like Sauk City’s 3D printer or Lomira’s MediaLab. They’re in the old, but small (population 12,000), city of Beaufort, South Carolina.

A couple of years ago, the Idaho Commission for Libraries began its “Make It At The Library” project, a network of makerspaces in small libraries across the state.

There are small and rural libraries with makerspaces arising in places as widespread as Maine, Montana, New Mexico, small town New Jersey, Canada and as far as the United Kingdom and New Zealand!

As interesting as the adoption of makerspaces is, it is part of a larger picture about the technology and leadership role of libraries in small towns and rural areas.

A few months ago, Professor Brian Whitacre of Oklahoma State University and Professor Colin Rhinesmith of the University of Oklahoma published interested research that dealt with another part of this larger picture:

“Rural libraries have long been a crucial part of the small-town way of life … Now we’ve found through a new study that rural libraries may also provide another important benefit: They may increase local rates of household broadband adoption.

“Our study found that, even after controlling for other things that likely influence broadband adoption (such as levels of income, education, and age), an additional library in a rural county was associated with higher residential broadband adoption rates … libraries were the only type of ‘community anchor institution’ to show any kind of relationship.”

Whether it is makerspaces or enabling necessary connections to the global Internet, these rural libraries are playing the role that all libraries should — fulfilling their potential as the central institution in a digital world and a knowledge economy.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/131154892399/the-digital-imperative-of-rural-libraries]

October 5, 2015

Robots Like Humans — Or Not?

There has been great interest in robots that seem to act like human, not just in the movies, but also in technology news. So much so, that the big debate in the robot world would seem to be how much we should program our robots to be like us.

Previously, I’ve blogged about machines that create art, poetry and even news reports. While those are all intellectual exercises that people might think “smart” machines could do, there are also robots from Japan, of course, that can dance — maybe break dance — as you can see in this video from earlier this year.

(It’s worth noting that much of this leading edge robotics of this
kind is coming from Japan, perhaps in the face of a declining and aging
human population.)

Murata
has made dancing robotic cheerleaders, albeit to show how to control
and coordinate robots and not necessarily to set the dancing world on
fire. They too have a video to demonstrate the point.

Some Canadians sent a robot, called Hitchbot, hitchhiking, like a
college student seeing the world for the first time. More than a year
ago, I blogged
about its trip across Canada. Then two months ago, there were several
reports about how sad it was that HitchBot was beheaded by the criminal
elements who supposedly control the streets of Philadelphia at night.
The New York Times’s poignant headline was “Hitchhiking Robot, Safe in Several Countries, Meets Its End in Philadelphia”.

Later substantial evidence was brought to light that media personalities were responsible. See “Was hitchBOT’s destruction part of a publicity stunt?”

In any event, to make up for the loss of HitchBot, other Philadelphians built Philly Love Bots. Radio station WMMR promoted
their own version called Pope-Bot, in anticipation of the trip by Pope
Francis. It has survived the real Pope’s trip to Philly and has even
traveled around that area without incident.

Consider also sports, which has featured humans in contests with each
other for thousands of years – albeit aided, more recently, by very
advanced equipment and drugs.

Apparently, some folks now envision
sports contests fought by robots doing things humans do, but only
better. Cody Brown, the designer known for creating the visual
storytelling tool Scroll kit, sees a different kind of story. In TIME
Magazine, he suggested seven reasons “Why Robotic Sports Will One Day Rival The NFL”.

We also want robots to provide a human touch. Thinking of the needs of the elderly, RIKEN
has developed “a new experimental nursing care robot, ROBEAR, which is
capable of performing tasks such as lifting a patient from a bed into a
wheelchair or providing assistance to a patient who is able to stand up
but requires help to do so.”

The research staff at the Google Brain project have been developing a
chatbot that can have normal conversations with people, even on
subjects that don’t lend themselves to factual answers to basic
questions that are the staple of such robotic services – subjects like
the meaning of life. The chatbot learned a more human style by ingesting and analyzing an enormous number of conversations between real people.

Of
course, the desire to make robots and their ilk too much like humans
can backfire. Witness the negative reaction to Mattel’s Talking Barbie.

Indeed,
there are benefits if we don’t try to make robots in our human image –
although doing so might make us feel less like gods 🙂

At
Carnegie-Mellon, researchers decided that maybe it didn’t make sense to
put “eyes” on a robot’s head, the way human bodies do. As they announced a few days ago, instead, they put the eyes into the robot’s hands and that made the fingers much more effective.

We
ought to consider that, with ever growing intelligence, eventually
robots will figure it all out themselves. Researchers at Cambridge
University and the University of Zurich have laid the groundwork by
developing a robotic system
that evolves and improves its performance. The robotic system then
changes its own software so that the next generation is better.

As the lead researcher, Dr. Fumiya Iida, said:

“One
of the big questions in biology is how intelligence came about – we’re
using robotics to explore this mystery … we want to see robots that are
capable of innovation and creativity.”

And where that
leads will be unpredictable, except that it isn’t likely the robots will
improve themselves by copying everything we humans do.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/130549037815/robots-like-humans-or-not]